Abstract
The problem of free vibration of a rotating tapered beam is investigated by developing explicit expressions for the mass, elastic and centrifugal stiffness matrices in terms of the taper ratios. This investigation takes into account the effect of tapering in two planes, the effect of hub radius as well as the stiffening effect of rotation. The equations of motion are derived; the associated generalized eigenvalue problem is defined in conjunction with a suitable Lagrangian form and solved for a wide range of parameter changes. The effect of tapering on the natural frequencies of the beam is examined with all parameter changes present. Results are compared with those available in literature and are found to be in excellent agreement.